historicafandomcom-20200222-history
German East Africa campaign
The German East Africa campaign occurred from 3 August 1914 to 25 November 1918 amid the African campaigns of World War I. While the other German colonies in Africa fell relatively quickly, German East Africa held out until the end of the war due to the German general Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's brilliant guerrilla campaign against the Entente forces. A German light cruiser, the SMS Koenigsberg, operated off the coast of German East Africa since the start of World War I. Seeing this as a threat, Britain decided to mount an invasion of German East Africa by troops from British India. On 2 November, an 8,000-strong Anglo-Indian expeditionary force landed near the East African port of Tanga. The defense of the German colony was in the hands of Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, with around 1,000 Schutztruppe (colonial soldiers) under his command. The Indian expeditionary force was low on morale and short of training and leadership. Its slow approach gave Lettow-Vorbeck sufficient warning to move his troops to Tanga by train. A confused battle ensued on 4 November, and the shaken Anglo-Indian troops fled back to their ships, leaving most of their equipment behind. Lettow-Vorbeck pursued a prolonged defensive campaign designed to absorb maximum British resources. While the British were organizing their response to this humiliation on land, the Koenigsberg was pursued by Royal Navy warships to the mangrove swamps of the Rufiji Delta. Although it could not escape the Royal Navy's blockade, the Koenigsberg held out until July 1915. Even after the cruiser was bombarded by British river monitors (flat-bottomed gunboats) and had to be abandoned, its sailors continued to fight, joining Lettow-Vorbeck's army and bringing their ship's heavy naval guns with them. Following the fall of German South West Africa to the South Africans in July 1915, South African forces were then transferred to East Africa, where they spearheaded the campaign to hunt down Lettow-Vorbeck, who was still at large. The South African mounted columns proved far less effective in East Africa, however. The tsetse fly took an enormous toll on their horses, while malaria debilitated the troops. Most white South African troops were withdrawn from East Africa by the end of 1916, defeated by disease. They were replaced by black African troops, such as the King's African Rifles. Lettow-Vorbeck sustained his mobile campaign in the face of ever-increasing numbers of British imperial forces; Allied campaigns against German colonial forces continued up to the end of the war, with the last German troops surrendering on 25 November (fourteen days following the general ceasefire of 11 November). Background The Allies occupied all of Germany's African colonies in the war, but met stiff resistance in German East Africa. German colonial forces under Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck launched cross-border raids into British colonies from German East Africa in September 1914. In November, a division from British India was defeated by Lettow-Vorbeck's forces at Tanga (in modern-day Tanzania). After the conquest of German South West Africa (Namibia) in July 1915, many South African troops joined the East African campaign. Meanwhile, sailors from the German cruiser SMS Koenigsberg, destroyed the Royal Navy in East Africa's Rufiji delta, escaped capture to join Lettow-Vorbeck's forces. Campaign German East Africa - mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi - had an area of around 386,000 square miles. In 1914, its European population numbered barely 5,000. German rule was maintained by a defense force, the Schutztruppe, consisting of about 2,500 Askaris (black African troops) under the command of a few German officers. The colony was bordered by British, Belgian, and Portuguese colonies with an equally sparse white population. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the commander-in-chief of the Schutztruppe, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, saw it as his duty to contribute to the wider German war effort by engaging Germany's enemies wherever and whenever possible. This was to be the rationale for a campaign that began in September 1914 and continued throughout the war. In January 1915, Lettow-Vorbeck, pursuing this policy of aggression, had attacked the British Indian garrison at Jassin on the border between German East Africa and British East Africa, forcing the soldiers to surrender. This had proved a hollow victory, however, since Lettow-Vorbeck lost several key officers in the attack and used up a large quantity of ammunition, which was in short supply. He was obliged to change his tactics, carrying out repeated cross-border raids, ambushing trains and destroying bridges, but avoiding battle. The Uganda railroad, a key transportation link in British East Africa, was a particularly vulnerable target. The indomitable Schutztruppe In 1916, the British embarked upon a major campaign to occupy German East Africa and defeat the Schutztruppe once and for all. South African general Jan Smuts was sent to lead the campaign, taking a substantial body of South African mounted troops. Along with the predominantly black soldiers of the King's African Rifles and British Indian troops, this gave Smuts a force of around 25,000 men. Meanwhile, Lettow-Vorbeck had built up his Schutztruppe to around 15,000 combat troops, including several thousand Germans from the settler population and sailors from the abandoned cruiser SMS Koenigsberg, destroyed by the Royal Navy in the Rufiji delta the previous year. Attack and counterattack From March 1916, Smuts dispatched columns into German East Africa, while attacks were also mounted by the Belgians across the border from the Congo. Lettow-Vorbeck was unable to prevent Smuts taking the colony's two railroads and occupying the administrative capital, Dar es Salaam, by September. The British success was, however, largely illusory. Mounting ambushes and counterattacks, Lettow-Vorbeck inflicted losses on Smuts' forces in a number of small-scale encounters in which the Schutztruppe achieved local superiority. The South Africans' dependence on horses proved disastrous, since most of the animals died of diseases carried by the tsetse fly. The South African troops suffered from malaria and dysentery, and many units were soon reduced to a fraction of their original strength. In January 1917, Smuts left East Africa claiming a victory, but Lettow-Vorbeck had withdrawn his forces south to the Rufiji River region and was in no sense beaten. Overcoming obstacles In 1917, the British increased the proportion of black troops deployed in East Africa, in the belief that they would be best able to tolerate the climate and withstand disease. A Nigerian brigade was sent from West Africa and more soldiers were recruited locally into the King's African Rifles. The British also sought to benefit from improved technology, bringing in a number of reconnaissance aircraft and making use of radio. With horses ruled out by the prevalence of tsetse flies, motor trucks were imported for transportation, though the shortage of roads of even the most basic kind limited their effectiveness. Local conditions forced both sides in East Africa to campaign in a similar fashion. The Schutztruppe and their opponents operated in self-sufficient columns on foot, depending on thousands of forcibly recruited African porters to carry their supplies. Lettow-Vorbeck's soldiers resupplied themselves by capturing British equipment and living off the land. Like locusts, their passage through a fertile zone left a food shortage in its wake. Troops on both sides would systematically destroy crops to deny them to the enemy, condemning the local villagers to starvation. Pursuit through Africa Despite the difficulty of simply surviving as fugitive forces in a largely hostile environment, Lettow-Vorbeck's columns continued to seize the initiative. From February to October 1917, a column of about 500 Schutztruppe, initially led by Captain Max Wintgens and then by Captain Heinrich Naumann, forged their way northward across East Africa from Lake Nyasa to Mount Kilimanjaro. Pursued by thousands of British and Belgian troops, they were eventually forced to surrender. Even when harried by superior forces, Lettow-Vorbeck sought any opportunity to inflict a defeat. In October 1917, the new British commander-in-chief, South African General Jacob van Deventer, sent Nigerian troops to attack the Schutztruppe at Mahiwa in the south of German East Africa. Poorly led, they were outmaneuvered and encircled. A British relief attempt failed, but the Nigerians eventually escaped through a gap in the German lines. Mahiwa was a humiliating defeat for the British, although the Schutztruppe could ill afford the casualties it also suffered. Reports of Lettow-Vorbeck's exploits aroused great enthusiasm in Germany. In November 1917, an ambitious attempt was made to supply the Schutztruppe with ammunition by flying Zeppelin airship L-59 4,000 miles from Bulgaria to East Africa. The airship reached Sudan before the mission was called off because of a false report that Lettow-Vorbeck had been defeated. In fact, with a force that had dwindled to 2,000 men. Lettow-Vorbeck continued to evade capture through the last year of the war. After a long trek through the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, where he found easy targets for raiding, he led his men back into German East Africa in September 1918. Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered, still undefeated, on 25 November after belatedly receiving news of the armistice. Aftermath In the peace settlement at the end of the war, Germany lost its entire colonial empire, including all of its African possessions. After the war, Britain and Belgium divided German East Africa between them. Their colonial rule was legally sanctioned by the grant of mandates from the League of Nations in 1922. The bulk of the former German colony became British-ruled Tanganyika, while the Belgians took over Rwanda and Burundi. The German colonies of Togoland (now Togo) and Kamerun were divided between Britain and France under the mandate system. The mandate to rule German South West Africa (Namibia) was given to South Africa. Most of these countries became independent in the 1950s and 60s. Namibia remained under South African control until 1990. Category:World War I Category:Battles